Cover Wars Revisited: Killing In The Name

Biffy Clyro: Our first acoustic peformance this week comes from this Scottish rock band. This is pretty funny actually, while the band doesn’t sing the “Fuck you” outro, the crowd certainly does!

The Disco Biscuits: The Disco Biscuits get a lot of shit for their vocal abilities, but Jon “The Barber” Gutwillig can yell with the best of them. I also noted that fact in the Nirvana Cover Wars when we saw The Biscuits deliver a great take on Lithium. I’ve included the long outro jam because it was the beginning of a fantastic set of music. If you like this, you need to check out their second set from Starscape 2008 where Killing In The Name is a theme for the second set. Source: 1-17-2009

Video from 6-5-2008 in Buffalo:

Guster: Judging by the tapes on the Live Music Archive, it looks like Guster rocked this playful arrangement a few times in the mid ’90s before resurrecting it at this private show in 2000. Pretty hilarious, after they are done with the song, there is some banter about how nobody should ever request the songs they are playing again, and they will be at the mercy of whoever is taping the show. WHOOPS! I especially like the signature Guster harmonies on the “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me”, it shows these guys have a sense of humor about their niche of pop music. Source: 7-2-2000

La Maison Tellier: I had never heard of this band before poking around for a few additional renditions to include this week, it’s nothing stellar but I wanted to include another obscure band to offset the jambands.

Lotus: Lotus does a mostly instrumental rendition here, have a listen to hear what I’m talking about. Source: 4-5-2008

Perpetual Groove: While I’ve never seen them do this cover, I have seen PGroove play Bulls On Parade a couple of times and it’s always thoroughly entertaining. Source: 2-15-2008

A short clip from Jamcruise 6:

Phish: In the middle of the narration filled fan favorite Harpua, Phish debuted their cover of this cover with drummer Jon Fishman on vocals. Thanks to @trey_talks for the full transcription. Here’s an excerpt,

And on this particular day, he’s sitting in his apartment and he’s listening to his stereo and he’s listening to some music from one of his favorite, all-time favorite bands. He’s in there crankin’ it..And it actually happens to be one of the only other bands, other than Phish, that won’t bullshit you and will tell you the truth you know, in their songs. And he’s uh he’s crankin’ it, he’s rockin’ out, & it sounds somethin’ like this.

Tea Leaf Green: Unlike The Biscuits (who stretch out their performance with an outro jam), TLG has managed to make an eight minute version of this song with the addition of a jam section in the middle. Source: 1-9-2004